Cool Pig Trivia

P is for Pig

Go Hog Wild Learning About Pigs!

Create a bulletin board using the following fun pig facts. Ask students to draw or paint pictures to go with each fact.

Pigs live on farms where farmers make sure they are healthy and well fed.

Pigs are smart and curious animals. They are one of the few animals that won’t overeat.

There are usually eight to twelve piglets in a family.

Pigs make funny sounds like grunts and squeals.

Pigs are clean animals.

Pigs can’t sweat – farmers use sprinklers to keep pigs cool.

Pigs eat ground-up corn, soybeans, wheat and barley.

The skin on pigs is pink. but the hair can be different colors.

Before pigs go to market they will weigh about 250 pounds. Their large size keeps them from being pets.

To Go Whole Hog
The expression came from the 18th Century when the English shilling was at one time called a “hog”. Thus, a spendthrift one willing to spend an entire shilling on the entertainment of a friend, was willing to “go whole hog”.

Bringing Home the Bacon
It was once the practice at fairs to grease a pig and let it loose among a number of blindfolded contestants. The man who successfully caught the greased pig could keep it…. and so, of course “bring home the bacon.”

Pig in a Poke
A “poke” is a bag – from the Irish word for it, poc. It was once the custom to bring small pigs to market in a bag. And if you bought such a “pig in a poke” without looking at it you didn’t really know what you were getting. Today, we use this term when we buy something sight unseen.

Pig Iron
Molten iron from a blast furnace is run into molds dug into the sand; these molds are a series of parallel trenches connected by a channel which runs at right angles to them — and the whole looks something like a sow with a litter of suckling pigs.

Living High on the Hog
This saying originated among army enlisted men who received shoulder and leg cuts while officers received the top loin cuts.

…that the word barbecue is derived from French-speaking pirates, who called a Caribbean pork feast “de barbe ii queue”, which translates “from beard to tail”. In other words, the pig roast reflected the fact that the hog was an eminently versatile animal that could be consumed from head to toe.

…that the ancient Chinese were so loath to be separated from fresh pork that the departed were sometimes accompanied to the grave with their herd of hogs.

…that the longest sausage on record is over a mile long? A single sausage measuring 5,917 feet in length was cooked in Barcelona, Spain on September 22, 1986.

…that when the first hot dogs were sold in 1904, street vendors called them “red hots” and they didn’t come on a bun, but instead a pair of white cotton gloves was given to keep fingers cool while eating.